


Not Close Enough to Love You

by rangerhitomi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alcohol, Guardian Angels, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Durbe is the guardian angel - there to serve, but never to touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Close Enough to Love You

_Someday, you’ll think you’re alone, but remember that you’re not._

“We don’t know when she’ll wake up.”

_You’re never alone._

“We don’t know  _if_ she’ll wake up.”

* * *

He walks with an arrogant stiffness, hands shoved deep in his pockets, a permanent scowl fixed to his face. He’s rude and people whisper about him in the hallways, whisper about things that he’s done, things he’s said, and people are frightened of him.

But it’s a front, to cover up how much he hurts.

Durbe is there when Ryoga locks his apartment door and sinks to the floor with his head in his hands. Durbe is there when Ryoga cries in his sleep. He’s there when Ryoga gets an upperclassman to buy him alcohol and sits on his living room couch and drinks it in one sitting, he is there when Ryoga passes out, he’s there when Ryoga wakes up the next morning and throws up in the kitchen sink and skips school because his head hurts too bad to function. He’s there at night when Ryoga lies awake in bed, giving his body the pleasure no one else will give him. He’s there when Ryoga throws the crumpled, dirty sheets onto his bedroom floor, littered with clothes he hasn’t washed in weeks, and he’s there when Ryoga falls asleep naked, shaking on the bare mattress.

He’s there when Ryoga visits his sister in the hospital, who’s so sick that the doctors aren’t sure she’ll wake up, and he’s there when Ryoga traces his fingers over the picture of his parents before smashing it on the coffee table.

He tries to reach out and touch him, to comfort him, to wrap him in an embrace that he so desperately needs because Ryoga Kamishiro needs to know that someone loves him. But he can’t do anything to help but be a whispering voice in Ryoga’s mind, a voice that Ryoga ignores because he’s hurting too much to acknowledge it, and Durbe sits next to Ryoga every night and cries with him.

* * *

When Ryoga walks home from the hospital one night, Durbe follows close behind. He has never wanted to be in a physical form so badly; no matter how much he tries to tell Ryoga that there are great things in store for him, Ryoga doesn’t hear him. The news wasn’t good.

They stop abruptly in the middle of the bridge and Ryoga glances out over the water. Durbe tries to grab his hand, but it’s futile.

“Ryoga,” he says desperately, and Ryoga pauses by the railing.

“If Rio dies,” Ryoga whispers to himself, but Durbe is there even if Ryoga doesn’t know it, “I’ll be completely alone.”

“That’s not true.” Durbe touches Ryoga’s face. Ryoga doesn’t feel Durbe’s intangible hand.

Ryoga closes his eyes. His shoulders shake, and they stand in silence for a long time.

“Sometimes I feel… like someone’s there.” Ryoga wipes his eyes. “But when I look, no one is.” He moves on; Durbe follows with a heart full of pain, and when they get home, Ryoga falls asleep on his bare mattress and Durbe falls asleep next to him, wrapping Ryoga’s body in his wings, but Ryoga can’t feel him, and Durbe can’t give Ryoga the warmth he needs.

* * *

Ryoga makes it to school, for a miracle. People give him disgusted looks and move out of his way, and Durbe had tried to convince Ryoga to do some laundry but Ryoga didn’t even feed himself for two days. His clothes are wrinkled and filthy and his tie is crooked and his hair unwashed and limp, but Ryoga stares straight ahead and ignores everyone around him.

When Durbe sees the first-year student help a total stranger pick up the papers he’d dropped, he wonders. The boy smiles at everyone he sees, and even if the students give him a  _look_  he keeps smiling. Durbe encourages Ryoga to take a different route to third period, to actually go to his algebra class before lunch, because that student has a class across the hallway and Durbe hopes they’ll meet. Ryoga frowns and shrugs, mutters  _whatever_ , and for the second miracle of the day listens to his voice of reason, the angel over his shoulder.

They have a test that Ryoga hasn’t studied for and struggles with because he hasn’t been in school for a while, and Durbe whispers the formula for something in Ryoga’s ear and Ryoga scribbles it down.

Cheating, maybe, but Durbe thinks he can justify it.

Ryoga turns in his test, looking somewhat relieved, and the teacher asks him where he’s been, only Ryoga shrugs and heads out in the hall. The boy isn’t there, and Durbe doesn’t see him, but Ryoga doesn’t care and goes up to the roof for lunch. He doesn’t have anything to eat again, and Durbe’s worried about him.

“You need to eat,” he says soothingly.

“I’m not really hungry,” Ryoga mutters to himself.

It’s in these times, when Ryoga is feeling lonely and  _wants_  someone to hear him that Durbe thinks maybe Ryoga can hear him.

“You haven’t eaten in days.”

“Nothing sounds good.”

The tears sting at the corner of Durbe’s eyes as he sits next to the boy he has been tasked to watch over. He is supposed to be a comforter, a voice of reason, a constant companion, but he feels like he’s failed. Ryoga is so alone.

A face pokes up over the ladder. It’s the boy from earlier, and he looks concerned. “Hi, um, you’re Shark, right?”

Ryoga gives a noncommittal shrug and looks down at his knees. “What do you want?” His voice is harsh.

The boy pauses. Durbe wonders for a terrifying second that he might just change his mind and leave Ryoga here, alone.

So Durbe walks over to the boy, places a hand on his shoulder, and whispers in his ear. “He needs someone to talk to.”

The boy’s eyes widen. Durbe knows he can hear him. “I… I’m Yuma. Yuma Tsukumo. I’m a first year.” He takes a hesitant step toward Ryoga, who looks up through a curtain of unwashed hair. “I saw you leaving your class. See, I had geometry across the hall, and you looked… Shark?”

Durbe kneels next to Ryoga and places his hands on Ryoga’s. “Please let him talk to you.”

Ryoga closes his eyes and gestures to the ledge next to him. Yuma smiles and sits.

“Do you like Dueling?”

* * *

 

Ryoga drinks too much that night, despite Durbe’s pleas not to, and falls asleep on the sofa. He doesn’t wake up for class, but there’s a message on his phone later that afternoon.

_Missed you today. Hope you feel better._

Durbe doesn’t need to see a name to know who it’s from.

* * *

 

He takes a shower for the first time in a week and a half, and it takes him nearly half an hour and almost all of the hot water to detangle his hair. The only towels he has are crumpled on the floor and smell faintly of mildew, but he towels himself off and puts on a dirty uniform and goes to school.

Yuma sees him and smiles, and for the first time, there’s a hint of something in Ryoga’s tired eyes that looks like contentment.

* * *

Sometimes Durbe wonders why he was assigned the task of watching over Ryoga Kamishiro. Other angels are more qualified than he when it comes to dealing with humans in fragile emotional states. It isn’t as though he is unable to influence the world around him, either, though interfering in the natural flow of the world could get him in trouble again.

Ryoga has too much to drink again, and he pulls on his shoes and starts looking for the keys to his motorbike. Durbe knows where they are and hopes that Ryoga can’t find them in his state, but his hopes are dashed. Ryoga stumbles out the door, muttering to himself that he  _needs some air_ , and ignores Durbe’s pleads that he just go to bed.

Durbe is faced with a decision now:  Let Ryoga drive and have fate play out as it may, or interfere and risk being taken from him?

An impossible decision, and it breaks Durbe’s heart. He had to make it once before, so long ago, and he chose to save his human. Ryoga reminds him so much of Nasch, and his heart still feels as though it is ripping in half when he remembers that his decision to save Nasch from a situation he may have survived led him straight into a situation that ended up killing him.  

He places a hand to the bike and shorts out the wiring. Ryoga swears at it and kicks it and yells a bit, but at least he goes back to bed, and at least he’s still alive.

Durbe prays for forgiveness.  _Please don’t take him from me._

He wishes he could say that Ryoga needs him, but deep down he knows he needs Ryoga.

* * *

“You’re really good, Shark!” Yuma says after Ryoga beats him at Duel Monsters. It’s a curious game that Durbe hadn’t seen Ryoga play in nearly three years.

“Thanks,” Ryoga mumbles.

“How long have you played?”

Durbe sees the sorrow in Ryoga’s eyes. Since his parents died. But not since he was disqualified. Shamed. Humiliated, taunted, hated. Not since his sister went to the hospital.

“A few years.”

Yuma misses the tears in Ryoga’s eyes, but Durbe doesn’t.

* * *

Ryoga shoves his clothes into a washing machine at the Laundromat and shoves in some coins. He sits in the corner on a hard chair, pulls out his literature book, and starts eating a sandwich.

“What if he’s just being nice?” Ryoga whispers, and it’s a fear Durbe can understand. “What if he doesn’t really like me?”

Durbe reaches out and touches Ryoga’s chest. “He does. Can’t you feel it?”

Ryoga cries, and Durbe knows he can feel the burning answer in his heart.

* * *

“You broke the law.”

Durbe watches Ryoga and Yuma eating lunch together on the rooftop. One of the  _others_  is there. It took longer than Durbe thought it would.

“I saved him,” Durbe whispers. Ryoga looks… happy. Happier, anyway. They’ve eaten together every day for two weeks. Ryoga takes care of himself, he eats more, he washes his clothing. He talks to himself when he showers, conversations with Yuma that he hopes will happen, and sometimes these make-believe conversations actually do happen. He talks to Rio, tells her that he thinks he has a friend now, and Durbe weeps with him in the hospital room.

“You took away his agency.”

“He needed a second chance. He needed someone to love him.”

The other snorts and turns away from Durbe. “You’re only here because he needs a Comforter. You’re not the Father, Durbe. You will have no more chances.”

He leaves, and Durbe closes his eyes. Ryoga was alive, and he found someone who cared about him.

Maybe soon Ryoga would have no need for a Comforter.

* * *

He walks with more confidence now, one hand in his pocket, a neutral look on his face. He’s still short with people and people still whisper about him in the hallways, whisper about things that he’s done, things he’s said, and people are still frightened of him.

But he has someone now.

Durbe is there when Ryoga invites Yuma over to his apartment for the first time and they make stir-fry together and it has too much sauce so they end up choking it down and eat too much rice to cover up the flavor. He’s there when Yuma stays over one night and they watch movies and fall asleep on each other on the couch. He’s there one night when Yuma holds his hand before leaving and gives Ryoga a gentle kiss. He’s there even though Ryoga isn’t quite so lonely, because Ryoga still cries himself to sleep sometimes, and Rio’s still sick, and Ryoga still thinks Yuma might leave him for someone better than him.  

But Durbe’s there because he loves Ryoga, even though Ryoga doesn’t really know he’s there, and even though he cannot hold Ryoga’s hand and rest his head on Ryoga’s shoulder and give Ryoga the physical attention he longs for with all his heart, Durbe is content in knowing that Ryoga has found someone who can.


End file.
